Posts Tagged ‘futura’

With the NCAA Tournament on hiatus until Thursday night (and let it be noted that last week I was RIGHT ON THE FUCKING MONEY when I predicted Davidson would end up in the Sweet 16. Go Team Brock!) I thought it would be a good idea to discuss something completely unrelated to collegiate athletics. Ergo, logos. Specifically, the FexEd logo, pictured above. It’s almost certainly my favorite corporate logotype. While I appreciate the simple san-serif type, a mash-up of classic modernist typefaces Futura and Univers, the logo’s true brilliance is in its use of negative space. Take another glance at the image above, this time focusing on the white spaces between the letters. Notice anything interesting? Yep, an arrow, plain as day, nestled between the “E” and “x.” And it’s no accident. The logo’s creater, Lindon Leader, has this to say:

“The power of the hidden arrow is simply that it is a ‘hidden bonus.’ It is a positive-reverse optical kind of thing: either you see it or you don’t. Importantly, not ‘getting the punch line’ by not seeing the arrow, does not reduce the impact of the logo’s essential communication.”

And it is the arrow’s incredible subtlety that really makes the logo work so well. In an age where consumers are constantly bludgeoned by heavy-handedattempts at branding, the FedEx logo is a breath of fresh air, a logotype that actually respects our intelligence. Infinitely superior to that goofball with the awful haircut and dry-erase marker that’s currently pimping UPS. (interview with Lindon Leader at the Sneeze.)